1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed toward a radio communication system, and more particularly toward a system for adapting a personal computer into a radio communications system for transmission of data among a base unit and the personal computer.
2. Background Art
Medical institutions are faced with a competitive environment in which they must improve profitability yet simultaneously improve patient care. There are several factors which contribute to the ever increasing costs of hospital care. For example, there is an ever increasing amount of paper work required by nurses, pharmacists and laboratory personnel. In addition, inaccurate recordings of drugs, supplies and tests involved in patient care result in decreasing revenues by a failure to fully capture billing opportunities of these actual costs. Inadequate management also results in a failure accurately report of all costs involved in treating a particular illness. The lack of accurate and rapid transfer of patient information often reduces the accuracy or effectiveness of drug administration in patient care, thereby increasing the duration of a hospital stay.
In addition, hospitals and other institutions must continuously strive to provide quality patient care. Medical errors, where the wrong patient receives the wrong drug at the wrong time, in the wrong dosage, or even the wrong surgery, are a significant problem for all health care facilities. Many prescription drugs and injections are identified merely by slips of paper on which the patient's name and identification number have been hand written by a nurse or technician who is to administer the treatment. For a variety of reasons, such as the transfer of patients to different beds and errors in marking the slips of paper, the patient, may be given an incorrect treatment. Further, as health care facilities continue to decrease the number of staff personnel as a cost cutting measure, the possibility of personnel errors will most likely increase.
Some of these problems have been addressed in Zook, U.S. Pat. No. 4,850,009 assigned to the assignee of the present invention. The Zook patent describes a portable hand held terminal which includes a data entry keyboard, a data entry optical bar code reader and an RF transceiver. The bar code reader and the keyboard can be used to enter data regarding the patient identity, the type of drug to be administered, or other information. The information is transmitted to a base transceiver which modulates the information and electronically communicates with a central recordation means such as a processing unit or CPU. The base transceiver can transmit verifications or other limited information from the CPU back to the portable hand held terminal. A set of terminals can also be in hard wire electronic communication with the CPU to enter in display data such as billing information. While the system described in the Zook patent is very effective, it is limited in that it is not intended to incorporate as a portable hand held terminal an off the shelf computer. Zook contemplates a portable hand held terminal specifically constructed for use as a remote communication unit.
New developments in computer technology, particularly in the personal computer format, continue to be made at an ever increasing rate. For example, ever more powerful microprocessors are being introduced every one to two years. In addition, new and improved data entry formats are being developed as data processing power increases. For example, pen based computers are now available which are able to recognize characters drawn on a screen with an activating wand or "pen". With this ever increasing rate of development in the personal computing area, particularly with respect to pen based computers, some means of incorporating state of the art computers into a radio communication system without significant modification of the computer is desirable. Heretofore, the prior art has failed to address this need.
Present clinical environments are filled with a variety of medical instruments which can clutter a work area or patient's room, thus interfering with safe and efficient patient care. In addition, this mass of medical equipment results in a tangle of wires necessary for powering the medical equipment and for communication among the medical equipment. Thus, while there is clearly a great need for portable hand held terminals for wireless communication with a central processing unit, there is an overriding need that such terminals not add to the crowding and potential for confusion in the clinical environment.
A growing problem confronting health care providers is loss or theft of costly medical equipment. Hospitals are often public or quasi public facilities, making it difficult to protect medical equipment, particularly small devices which can be readily hand carried. Thus, a need exists for providing security for personal computers used as portable hand held terminals.
The present invention is directed toward overcoming one or more of the problems discussed above.